Laos farmers are experimenting with pesticides after a number of pathogen's including 'curly leaf virus' has wiped out entire crops of watermelons.

ABC Rural: Joshua Becker

Agriculture makes up more than 75 per cent of the workforce in Laos and the majority of farmers are women.

Lester Burgess, honorary professor at the University of Sydney has identified new pathogens affecting local farmers and is working alongside them to find solutions.

"The national policy for a long time has been somewhat anti-pesticide," he said.

"But farmers have been using pesticides often incorrectly and also have had no education on what chemicals are the best and not a lot about chemical safety or pesticide safety.

"We've been given approval by the Department of Agriculture in Vientiane to take the first steps to improve knowledge of pesticides and pesticide safety.

"It's still somewhat of a national debate and some provinces ban the use of chemicals of all kinds and this is partly under pressure from some international funding agencies [for farmers] to be organic."

An educational poster shows farmers examples of how to protect themselves from chemicals and the problem with spray drift.

An educational poster shows farmers examples of how to protect themselves from chemicals and the problem with spray drift.

ABC Rural: Joshua Becker

Professor Burgess, said watermelons had become an important cash crop for farmers.

"The watermelons in particular are one of two crops in Southern Laos that have really lifted lot of families out of rural poverty," he said.

"The watermelon is a great a crop in this region because it's tough, it can be loaded onto a truck, they can keep on the side of the road in big pyramids for up to a week, so it's an ideal crop where you have minimal infrastructure for handling a fruit."

Australian researchers and volunteers assisted by the Crawford Fund are working to build up the capacity among locals such as Goi Sahn who is helping farmers distinguish between good and bad insects.

"We have beneficial and pest insects, so we help the farmer to know which one is beneficial and which is a pest, so I teach them how to control the pest and keep the beneficial one too," she said.

Laos farmers identify common weeds and the ideal control methods with Adjunct Professor, Diedre Le Merle, from Charles Sturt University.

Even before cases of strawberry sabotage crippled sales and cost the industry millions of dollars, Australian growers were despairing over dumping tonnes of perfectly good fruit that was too small or odd-shaped to find a market.